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Against terrorism, the government launches monitoring of Internet browsing history

2021-04-29T18:53:28.297Z


The government will announce new measures to fight terrorism on Wednesday. He also intends to unveil in the middle


According to the Interior Ministry, these are only "modest improvements".

The government has decided to strengthen the means of action available to France to fight terrorism.

For several weeks, and even before the attack on Rambouillet took place, the executive had been working on the sustainability of the use of the famous “black boxes”, introduced in 2015 and which make it possible to collect “connection data” likely to reveal a terrorist threat.

Data collection from Internet service providers, hosting companies and telephone operators.

Read alsoTerrorism: why the government brandishes its new law after the Rambouillet attack

It is this sustainability that the government will announce on Wednesday at the end of the Council of Ministers.

But his ambitions do not end there.

On May 12, the executive intends to present a broadening of the spectrum of data collected and analyzed by means of algorithms, by extending it to URLs, the addresses of web pages consulted by Internet users.

"A classified work"

The government confirms that this data collection must be part of the framework that has prevailed since 2015. Namely that of massive and anonymized collection. "If it was only a question of collecting the data of a person already identified by the intelligence services, we would not have recourse to the algorithm", one makes known place Beauvau. Concretely, the tool, reinforced by the analysis of Internet browsing, is supposed to detect an activity deemed suspicious. When this is the case, it then issues an alert, or a "hit" to the competent authorities. These must then obtain a second authorization in order to lift the anonymity of the "target". And a third, finally, to implement the surveillance measures of the person concerned.

Difficult to define its operation with more precision. Asked Tuesday by Le Parisien on this subject, the Interior Ministry argued Tuesday the principle of defense secrecy. “The work of algorithms is classified work, both in the construction of these algorithms and in the result that we draw”.

According to a version of the bill revealed by our colleagues at Next Inpact, the algorithm is supposed to exploit "the full addresses of resources on the Internet".

This clarification raises a number of questions as to the means to be implemented to achieve such a level of data collection.

“85 to 90% of the flow on the Internet is in HTTPS protocol, therefore encrypted and protected, recalls a cybersecurity expert, preferring to remain anonymous on this“ political and sensitive ”subject.

A priori, we can only see the certificate, or the server to which we connect.

No one will be able to read the URL in detail unless they decipher it.

"

The URL "gives private details"

However, deciphering URLs a priori could require very significant resources. “This would imply that operators or ISPs decipher the flows without slowing down Internet connections,” continues our specialist. It would be expensive and companies in the industry will not appreciate having to equip themselves with large processors to handle these decryption operations. They will work on getting full URLs for nothing in the majority of cases and this may slow down the throughput. This risk can however be mitigated by May 12, depending on the nature of the data that the algorithm will ultimately be responsible for analyzing.

The debate over URL collection is also highly political. Under François Hollande's five-year term, the government had considered integrating from the outset the analysis of web browsing within the framework of the intelligence bill. But while the law was supposed to only authorize the collection of connection data and not content data, fears had been brought before the national representation, in particular by the deputy Isabelle Attard. Supporting example, this one wanted to demonstrate all the private information which one could guess on the only basis of the URLs. "For example, you connected to a swinger or fetishist dating site twice a day for a month, but - we are told - we do not know at all what you have written or read ...", she queried then .

The National Commission for the Control of Intelligence Techniques (CNCTR), in an opinion issued in 2016, finally considered URLs "as mixed data, which can include both connection data and words referring to the content of correspondence exchanged or information consulted ”.

The CNCTR was only considering collecting part of the URLs, namely those which were not considered to refer to content.

Faced with these difficulties, the executive preferred to give up.

Read alsoPolice and intelligence services will continue to dig into the data of telecom operators

Has the situation changed today? The government, in the first draft of its bill, is talking about full addresses. If he stuck to this, "the State would not fully respect the decisions of the European courts and does not seem to show any will to apply European case law and guarantees on data collection," Yann Padova reacts. , lawyer at Baker McKenzie, reading the bill. The URL is not just technical data to be collected, it gives private details. "

Questioned on this point, the Ministry of the Interior simply recalls that the de-anonymization of data will have to be authorized but also an opinion from the CNCTR. "European case law clearly establishes that in the context of the fight against terrorism, the collection and use of data must be subject to a decision by a judge or an independent authority," retorts Yann Padova. In France, this goes through a service of the Prime Minister after having received the opinion of the CNTR ”. In a recent decision, the Council of State gave the government six months to review this mode of authorization for the use of data.

So many reasons to believe that monitoring Internet history could trigger a lively political and legal debate. The government is not mistaken, by giving itself until May 12 to refine its text.

Source: leparis

All news articles on 2021-04-29

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